What is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a free tool provided by Google. It is a "business" listing that is displayed on the Google results page and on Google Maps. This card provides information about your business to Internet users: address, phone, opening hours, customer reviews, etc. It is the official business card of your company on Google.

Optimizing your Google My Business listing is the first fundamental step of your SEO.

  • Optimization of the form itself: content, visuals, posts, reviews...
  • The "off-site" optimization, via the website and netlinking, for example.

How to properly set up a Google My Business listing?

1st question: What is the main keyword of the listing?

When you design your listing, you need to think about the main keyword on which your prospects could find you.

Of course, you should use your brand name, so that a prospect who is looking for you will immediately find your information. When you set up your listing with care, you get a qualitative result on "brand" queries.

For example, Privateaser goes up in Adwords, in SEO, and with the Google My Business listing: the Google result page is theirs!

google-my-business-privateer

But be careful, you should not stop there, on the contrary, because optimizing your listing on the most generic keyword that corresponds to your value proposition will allow you to go up on this query, in addition to your brand.

For example, "StartupOnly", which offers jobs in startups, goes up with its Google My Business listing on the query "Job startup Paris"! Who says better?

google-my-business-startuponly

On-page optimization

Let’s take SmartKeyword as an example:

  • Website : https://smartkeyword.io
  • Main keyword: "SEO Agency Paris".
  • Office address: 55 rue La Boétie, 75008 Paris

Step 1: Create and validate the page

To start, you just have to connect to https://www.google.com/business, fill in the basic information, and validate the form, either by mail or via a call (very practical to get the form validated in a few minutes!). Then on the home screen of Google My Business, you can start working!

google-my-business-smartkeyword

Adding and modifying information related to the form:

  • Name: start with your brand, then complete with your main keyword, example : "SmartKeyword.io - SEO Agency Paris "

google-my-business-smartkeyword

and in the card, it corresponds to:

google-my-business-fiche

  • Main category: here you have to find what describes you best.

google-my-business-category

For information to help you find your main keyword, google it and look at what your competitors have done:

google-my-business-competitors

Tip: click on "Other addresses" and see the full listing.

  • Address: Your office address
  • Phone number: Your phone number, ideally a landline to look more professional

google-my-business-address

  • Website and contact url : The url of your website and the url of a contact page if it is relevant in your case
  • Import an image of your logo incl. basic optimizations !
    • name of your logo: logo_agence_seo_paris_smartkeyword
    • caption: logo_agence_seo_paris_smartkeyword
  • Import pictures to make people want to come and see you!
  • Opening dates and times if relevant (special times...):

opening-time-smartkeyword

Step 2: Optimize secondary categories, description and services

One week after creating the page, the serious stuff begins. And because we’re talking SEO, it is all relative to your competitors. So let’s see what our friends are doing :).

Look at the top 5 results in Google on your main keyword, here "SEO Agency Paris", and look at what competitors do in terms of :

  • Categories
  • Notes & number of reviews
  • Number of photos
  • Number of posts (if any)
  • Listed description
  • Listed "products”
  • Listed "services”

Next: going further on "on-page" optimization and advantages of "off-page" optimization

We have just seen how to set up your Google My Business listing, as well as the first optimizations to start your local SEO. Of course it is important to update your listing regularly!

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   Article written by Louis Chevant

Further reading

The complete guide to local SEO with Google My Business

The step-by-step method to optimize your company's Google My Business listing.